Trends

INSIGHTS PEOPLE

BRANDS SHOULD CAPITALISE ON BOOM IN ONLINE CONSUMPTION & SHOPPING

By Insights People

Brands and retailers should focus their marketing spend on new and emerging platforms to target the right audience. The Insights People Media Mix Compass has been created to help brands improve ROI across their advertising and marketing spend.

The Insights People, a leading global in kids, parents and family marketing intelligence, surveys more than 5000 children every week aged 3-18 in 13 countries across five continents and in total surveys more than 340,000 kids a year. According to the Kids Insights data, the popularity of online shopping has increased significantly during the pandemic. For example, 40% of German teens are spending much of their money online. In France older teens are driving the trend of online shopping becoming the norm, with a +22% year-on-year increase in the number of 16-18s spending the majority of their money online. In Italy compared with Q4 2019, teens’ and tweens’ spending online increased +28%. Interestingly, across all age groups, teens are most inclined to use Instagram to keep up to date with their favourite shops (36% in Germany, indicative of 1.6M). In France, teens who keep up to date with their favourite shops on Instagram (29%) over-index on being more likely to buy products because of seeing them advertised (+40%). In Spain 73% of teen girls spending an average of 1 hour 33 minutes per day in Instagram. To further capitalise on the growth of online shopping, Instagram integrates shopping tags to its Reels function to enable creators to add product listings to their Reels clips, which enables viewers to make purchases without having to switch between different platforms. Brands should also keep track of which platforms kids are using to reach their target audience more effectively.

At the same time, Google is testing a new integration with Shopify to enable an ecommerce feature on YouTube videos. 10-15 year-old German teens are most inclined to use YouTube to keep track of

their favourite shops (33%, indicative of 1.4M), shoppable YouTube videos are expected to become a major virtual shopping destination for kids.

Across all European markets that The Insights People survey, Spanish tweens were most inclined to shop offline by a majority (75%), and were also the second most likely to report cash as their preferred payment method (76%), behind only Germany.

However, a gradual shift towards online shopping has been witnessed among this demographic as +49% more tweens have reported to mostly shop online since the beginning of the year. French tweens rank 4th in offline spending, Mexico (73%) and Russia (77%).

In terms of the choice brands for shopping in Italy, Nike is the favourite shop among preschool boys (4.8%), girls the same age show the most significant interest in H&M, more than double the interest in Zara, the second favourite brand, with an increase of +26% from last quarter. French toddlers give preference JouéClub which increased popularity +46%. Spanish kids have reported Juguettos as their favourite brand, overtaking Zara to become the most favourite high street shop.

INTERESTING FACTS

2019 was a vastly different digital and offline landscape for kids in Italy. Q2 2019 saw significantly lower rates of device ownership amongst 6-12s than is seen today: 37% have mobile phone ownership compared with 46% now. Currently, Italian kids spent between the ages of 10 and 12 spend an average of 1 hour 11 minutes per day playing video games: an increase of +16% since March 2019. In Germany children play for 58 minutes per day. Almost the same result in Spain – 57 minutes per day.

Mostly they use mobile apps or PC gaming instead of consoles. This is further supported by the fact that Q4 2020 shows a total of 27% of kids (10-12) ranking the top 5 mobile apps as their favourite overall video game, compared with only 20% in Q2 2019. It can give brands opportunities for in-game advertising and product placement could grow with this audience in the future. As part of its latest innovation, The Insights People have developed a new media planning tool – called Media Mix Compass, which shows the power of each media type for a specific audience. The tool is the first real-time media tool of its kind. The Media Mix Compass provides an independent account of kids’ media consumption which will help improve brands decision making, in an increasingly fragmented ecosystem. With a 360° view of kids, tweens, and teens ecosystems, brands can segment the data on a global, country, regional, gender or age view, or by their specific attitudes, behaviors and consumptions. Kids today have more influence and decision-making power within the home than any other previous generation. This is true for categories such as toys & games or streaming platforms as you could expect. But also, we see kids’ influence growing over many other new categories, such as the purchase of a new car. It is therefore more important than ever before to reach and engage kids.

To learn more about the Kids Insights Media Mix Compass, and to receive complimentary access to the tool and a copy of an example report please visit: www.kidsinsights.com/mediamix

To learn more about the attitudes, behavior and consumption patterns of kids, parents and families, and to get freemium access to the Insights People real-time data portal, please visit: http://kidsinsights.com/licensingmagazine/